Our History

“It’s really always been about the same thing – Water. We can’t live without it.”
Hattie Hasan: Stopcocks founder

In late 2006, 16 years after founding Stopcocks Hattie Hasan stood in front of 250 entrepreneurs and vowed to build an army of women plumbers. Together we would make a difference to the terrible situation in so many parts of the world where the water they drink is killing them!

She had NO idea how that would be achieved. She didn’t know it would mean doing things no woman had done before and creating a national brand dedicated to customer service and even a franchise.

She started anyway; re-branded to create Stopcocks Women Plumbers and set about seeking her counterparts. Not an easy task, since they were so few.

We tried one thing, we failed, we tried another, we failed, we gave up and did something else completely, we lost all our money and came back to plumbing. We banged on doors and banged our heads against brick walls and still got nowhere.

We cried like women plumbers (without leaking). We felt like giving up often, but somehow, we didn’t.

There was no money in it, but we sent out our newsletter to women plumbers and talked about women plumbers in blogs and articles. It served to get the name of Stopcocks out into the public arena.